The Night That Every Concert Came to Cleveland

I had this whole thing I was going to write about when I got home tonight, like I had planned in my head that I would compose this whole funny fantasy show, where I pretended that Britney Spears (who was in town) sat in with the Decemberists, and she and Colin did a whole duet for Red Right Ankle, and then she had a spontaneous folk dance off with Pat Benatar (who was also in town), and Frightened Rabbit (WHO WAS ALSO IN TOWN) played back up while Colin sang Legionnaire. And like, probably in this fantasy, Britney also revealed she knew how to play the harmonica.

But instead what happened is I went to the Decemberists show in a red dress, which was at Nautica, this venue that seems great cause it's right on the river, and outside and stuff, but in fact ends up sucking a lot of energy out of shows because they are so strict about you staying in your seat. Which is some bullshit during a rock show, who stays in their seat? You cannot possibly expect me to sit in a certain place. You fucking stay in one place, somewhere else, awful yellow shirted uniformed person. Also you need to be able to dance, which is hard to do in bleachers, as in pretty impossible and also sort of dangerous. So the first part of the show was eh, was very serious and quiet, and no one was dancing at all. I was bouncing, but mostly everyone sat in their seat appreciatively tapping their knees, and that was some bullshit. It made me mad and antsy and gave me all sort of thoughts about trouble making, mostly involving the long ladders that led up from the bleachers into the lighting decks. But also then they played July July, which is MY song, and Architect and We Both Go Down Together, so pretty much all my favorite songs. I was happy enough. But I wasn't Happy. The band was trying, but the security guards had killed the crowd.

Then during the encore, they played Mariner's Revenge, and just as Mr. Meloy was getting done explaining how we all needed to make the whale sound, a giant cargo ship came around the curve of the river. A huge golden glowing monster of a thing, cranes and all, and corners and levels and mechanics. Silently coming around the bend, directly behind the stage, the music echoing off the bulwarks, and there were a few men out on the decks watching us, and everyone in the theater was watching them with their jaw open, and for the entire length of this glorious dancing clapping stomping Spanish skirt of a song the ship passed prehistorically behind us. until it was gone, and the song was over in a roar, and everyone poured into the aisles.

That was the magic moment everyone had been waiting for, that unknown thing that is the difference between a night and a Night, and so we all went home relieved and full of wonder and in love again.

ANTM Cycle 16: Why Guys Don't Make Passes at Girls Who Can't Walk Properly in Giant Flotation Devices

(alternatively titled: What if the supposed seasonal memory lapse of people who have winters turned out to be an actual and true thing, caused by something they've been putting in the water, to keep us around past summer?)





Sarah: I am watching VH1 Behind the Music: Motley Crue
it's horrifying

Bridget: I have been watching NCIS for the last hour

Sarah: I think these horrors have adequately prepared us for Tyra

At the beginning, in the beginning, there were would be months without magic and the villagers would be relieved. It was the period of incubation, when deep down at the ocean depths, the Sea Witch would carefully tend her nest, culling the dead eggs, cradling the hatchlings with the longest limbs folded inside their embryonic shells like fluttering birds. The ocean currents rocked them to sleep, and the creatures of the sea floor sustained them, their tiny little claws learning to grab quick and quietly from the shadows an unsuspecting lobster or crab, their tiny new little teeth cracking the shells with little horrible snaps and cracks, the tinkling of shiny clean enamel and shiny new purpose.

In the spring, as the winter icebergs floated away to the far away dimensions fleeing the sun, the storms came, and in her cave, the Sea Witch surveyed her survivors, tall and young and proud, and pronounced them fit for the trials. The villagers saw the winds changing, knew what the red sunrises predicted, red like patent leather, red like lipstick, red like blood soaked manicures. One night, when the lightning flashed the brightest, the mothers stowed their babes safe away and locked the windows tight, and up from the raging waves came the initiates, encased in plastic placentas, stumbling on their recently formed perfect limbs, swaying newborn colts. And the games began, the annual curse of every man and woman who chose to make their livelihood on this wretched coast.

Sarah: "give me another runway without a bubble on it"
if I had a nickel for every time I said that

The witch laughed at herself, knowing the faces of her children already, since they were the same faces she conjured every year. The Vulcan. The Trailer Park Queen. The Southern Belle. The Art Student. It didn't matter to know their names now, most of them would not survive the coming tests, they would crumble and cry and turn to dust. But she searched the faces, looking for the one she knew had something, a taste for sweat and sex and money. It hid in their doe eyes, underneath their dewy fresh cheeks. One of them had the beast in her. She would strip them down, peel their souls like old paint until they stood exposed in front her, and the fangs bared.

The first trial had been survival from the waves. The second trial was a portrait painted by a blind man with glass eyes. It was all very boring, the beginning. The witch cracked her knuckles, and scratched new catchphrases on her thighs with a small butter knife. She pictured them falling one by one, and smiled, but only with her eyes.

Bridget: That weird curly brown haired one is my enemy

Sarah: jaclyn?

Bridget: I don't know, I just missed her name AGAIN
I'm just going to pretend she doesn't have one



The full transcript of our liveblog can be found here. Welcome back bitches.